Still a bug in home media

My thanks to the Dish engineers for finally fixing the home media player bugs, and returning the function to ALMOST correct. But there is still one big bug that is quite annoying.

When watching a video, as the video approaches a fade to black, or a segment of black video like you would see between major scenes, the player purges the playback buffer as soon as that black video ENTERS the buffer and has been detected.

OK, an interesting way to resync everything, but it is not working properly. Sine the playback buffer is typically 15 or more seconds long, the set top is killing 15 seconds of video by purging the buffer too soon, and jumping to the stream just beyond the area of black. And even then, often jumping a bit too far into the segment beyond the black video.

As an example, I was watching a video episode of an old sitcom. As it approached the place where the commercial would be, the video abruptly stopped about 15 seconds before the commercial break, throwing away those 15 seconds and starting about 5 seconds into the next segment, throwing away the first 5 seconds after the black.

I also tried this expirment with a small video I made on my Mac in iMovie, and the same behavior is seen if I did a fade to black, hold black for 5 seconds and fade into the new segment.

I am using PLEX to send the videos to the Hopper and Joey, and both do the same thing. I also use Plex on a Roku box, and it does NOT have this problem. I tried playback on an Amazon Fire TV, and it too does not show this behavior. This leads me to believe the problem is not in the server.

So thanks for the fixes and getting Home Media back. Just not quite back all the way.

Might I request actually adding PLEX to the applications the set top has? It would be a great addition. It is on many of your competitor's boxes now as well.

Lastly, there is a sync problem if you fast forward a Home Media video. Sound is lost for some time and when it finally comes back, the video jumps forward 15 to 20 seconds. Probably part of the same bug. Again, not seen on Roku or Amazon playback.